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How Should War Be Related to Christian Love?

2014; Penn State University Press; Volume: 97; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/soundings.97.2.0186

2161-6302

Lisa Sowle Cahill,

Theology and Philosophy of Evil

Nigel Biggar offers an ardent and provocative defense of the continuing validity of war as an expression of Christian faith and life, grounding his argument in Augustine's theology of love. Biggar's case takes shape in the shadow of the two world wars, whose memory, as he recounts from personal experience, has formed the identities of three or four generations of Europeans. In Defence of War stands as a vindication of all who suffered and lost their lives for the Allied Powers and of the national governments (especially of Britain) that pursued these conflicts and later interventions in Kosovo and Iraq. A special target of Biggar's ire is Christian pacifists of a “liberal-left” variety, whom he judges impossibly naive about “the fact of gross and intractable wickedness” yet who, deplorably, have managed to “dominate the academic discipline of ethics.” As a “realist,” Biggar has few qualms about wielding violent force as a means of just, retributive punishment (2013, 10–13).According to Biggar, the Christian tradition on just war is not built on a paradigm of self-defense but on one of punishing injustice (212). He sees the most basic and comprehensive purpose of war as punishment, including ”retributive punishment,” motivated by “resentment” (67–68, 71–72, 76–77, 167–69, 190–9). “Resentment and retribution are hostile forces—they seek to coerce the wrongdoer: to stop him, to make him conscious of the evils he causes, to urge repentance onto him” (72). Following Augustine, Biggar insists that to kill is to love if carried out with respect and forgiveness. Augustine does not see the “real evil in war” as the killing of mere mortals, who perish in any event, but as sinful attitudes of cruelty, hatred, revenge, and “the lust of power.” The “peace and safety of the community” demand that wrongful injuries be met with “punishment,” in a spirit of “rightful retribution.” The gospel is no barrier, as long as Christian war-wagers proceed under “lawful authority” and with an “inward disposition” of love and forbearance (Augustine, Reply to Faustus the Manichean XII.74–76).I agree with Augustine and Biggar—as well as mainstream Christian tradition—that war, or at least violent coercive force, can be justified within Christian social ethics. However, I diverge from Biggar's analysis on three points. First, violence and killing are not works of Christian love properly speaking. The meaning of love of neighbor is abundantly illustrated in the gospels—by the parables of the Good Samaritan, of Lazarus at the gate, and the Prodigal Son—as compassionate care for the vulnerable and excluded. And, according to the Sermon on the Mount, love of enemies is also commanded. Second, then, Christians should not characterize war as loving punishment but as just defense of the common good. Aquinas qualifies Augustine's theology of war on this point, specifying that what authorities are doing when they use “the sword” to “punish evil-doers” is “defending the common weal” against internal or external “disturbances” (Summa Theologica [henceforth ST] II–II.Q42.a1.sed contra). Third, a Christian evaluation of war should always pay attention to the priority of peace and peacebuilding, for both theological and practical reasons. The theology and ethics of international peacebuilding correspond to the ongoing disaggregation of global governance and the importance of local, interreligious efforts to reconcile and rebuild communities (Slaughter 2004; Love 2010).Biggar points out rightly that “the New Testament does not generate an absolute prohibition of violence, but it does generate an absolute injunction of love” (61). Biggar and Augustine name a genuine problem: what does Christian discipleship mean when the very requirements not only of a just society but also of love for vulnerable neighbors seem to include coercing or even killing other people who threaten them? The sticking point is what love actually means in a world in which one's duties may conflict, and one's best efforts may be met by opposition. According to the gospel, God's reign is already begun (Mark 1:14), furnishing real historical possibilities for inclusive and reconciling community. At the same time, the fullness of redemption is not yet accessible, the world's evil and suffering not entirely reversed. A main purpose and task of Christian ethics is to reflect on the practical consequences of this eschatological gap.Writing as a Christian theologian, Biggar asserts, “Love can be active in the making of war” (91), and the way it is active is by forgiving those who are violently punished. In Augustine's paradoxical characterization, war is “a sort of kind harshness” that does its object a favor by calling “him” to repentance (61, 167). I have always found this hoped-for outcome hard to envision, since the ostensible beneficiary of the “just warrior” presumably will be dead when their interaction concludes. Although just war might further human dignity, and the slain enemy retains dignity, there is a most tenuous connection between war's good and the good of those killed in its cause. Seeing war as an act of kindness to those it actually targets, rather than only to those it aims to protect, gives killing a wider validation than it deserves, discouraging appreciation of the real ambiguity or even contradiction in defending killing as an expression of the gospel.The prospect of loving killing is oxymoronic not only from the standpoint of the victim but also from that of human psychology. Unlike Augustine, Biggar does consider the effects of serving in war on the moral character and loving attitudes of war-wagers. Perhaps because of his commendably scrupulous examination of counterexamples, Nigel Biggar's “killing with love” defense left me most impressed with the case against it. Although a “realist,” he is not realistic on this score. His chapter “Love in War” actually proves that not atypically war tends to form dispositions to hatred and war crimes—often in the service of love of comrades, intensified precisely because the human beings involved are under mortal threat and in extremis. Biggar recounts several horrifying incidents of atrocities in war and cites former combatants who recall “blood lust” and “an immense desire to destroy” (86–87). The prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder among veterans attests that war occasions moral and psychological dissolution at least as often as moral virtue.Yet Biggar believes that as long as some soldiers regard their enemies with respect and compassion, and have at least the motive of love for comrades, the “right intention” test has been met, and war can be sheltered under the command to love neighbor and enemy. He thus deflects accusations that the punishment paradigm ends up “fostering moral self-righteousness and loosening the reins of war” (168). I am unpersuaded, given Augustine's throwaway line dismissing deaths in war as a serious problem, Biggar's impressive collection of first-person narratives of dehumanization and war crimes, and ongoing atrocities in, for example, Syria and the Democratic Republic of Congo.In Defence of War is an extensive and grim narration of approximately a century of conflicts involving Europe, colored in paradoxical ways by memoirs and histories of human nobility, stoicism, degradation, despair, and—everywhere—suffering. The long chain of officially mandated belligerencies and their willing and unwilling victims—their costs, repetitiveness, and inevitability—brings home the question “Was it worth it?” and forms the backdrop to Biggar's honest concession that at the end of the day, he really does not know.Because violence is not loving even if just, because justifications of violence are biased toward power holders, because war brings incredible destruction, and because doing violence corrupts, war should be a very last resort, undertaken regretfully and even repentantly. As Karl Barth says, war is a “strange” form of the protection of life, an ultima ratio that should be accepted only “with the greatest reserve on the exhaustion of all other possibilities” (1961, 398). I am confident that Nigel Biggar would agree with this in theory. Yet certain ways of describing and legitimating war bring home its exceptional and tragic character better than others. What is needed in Christian social ethics is not only cogent intellectual analysis, important though that is, but also the imaginative direction of moral and religious affections in ways that inspire lived embodiment of the gospel's nonviolent vision.To describe and justify war as kind and loving punishment obfuscates the real nature of war, imagines it to deserve wholehearted endorsement, and diverts attention from the need for constraints and the extreme difficulty of enacting them. I believe that a more promising route to a Christian appraisal of just war lies in Aquinas's rereading of Augustine and, derivatively, in Nigel Biggar's own chapter on the principle of double effect.Turning to Aquinas, war may be seen as typically sinful yet exceptionally justified by the common good. I believe it is less clear than does Biggar that the Christian tradition on war, and Aquinas specifically (161), favor the punishment model. Thomas Aquinas rejects the idea that obedience to the evangelical love commands is directly operative in war-making “for the common good” and excludes clerics from war precisely because war interferes with mindfulness of God and imitation of Christ (II–II.Q40, a1.ad2; and a2). The intention necessary to justify war is “the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil.” Aquinas quotes Augustine without fully endorsing Augustine's characterization of war as punishment. Legally authorized killing is just if and only if it is meant “to safeguard the common good” (II–II.Q64.a2). Aquinas reiterates twice that a just war is one “defending the common weal” (II–II.Q40.a1).Biggar, however, distinguishes war as punishment from war as self-defense; while just war is always the former, it need not be the latter. Yet I find in Biggar's own discussion of war a tacit affinity with the idea that to be just, war must be defensive. For example, on the same page (212) on which Biggar asserts that the Christian tradition “does not take self-defence as the paradigm of just war,” he also says just war “can only be warranted if it aims to defend genuine and important goods against grave and unjust threats” and “to mete out that punishment which comprises long-term defence.” Again, he insists war is “basically punitive” (190, 191)—yet defines punitive to equal “a hostile response, defensive and corrective, to the agents of wrongdoing” (191; emphases added).Although Biggar clarifies that punishment is a large category comprising many purposes, including “defensive, vindicative, deterrent and reformative,” vindication or even vengeful retaliation seems a sufficient purpose, since, simply stated, wrongdoers deserve “whatever harms they impose” (169). To see war as just when solely vindicative (absent any larger relation to the common good) amounts to saying that war may be just simply by returning evil for evil. This is certainly not a Christian view of justice.The other three purposes of war named—defense, deterrence, and reform—all have to do with protecting and furthering the common good. And if a defensive purpose is a necessary part of just war, then I do not see much to be gained by insisting that it is “punitive.” The punitive paradigm shifts the focus from the good to be protected to the grievance that has been suffered, thus giving free rein to emotions of anger and “resentment,” fostering attitudes of “self-righteousness,” and “loosening” the restraints on violence done. Guided by the criterion of the common good, Aquinas does at least set one limit on war that Augustine does not: it is wrong to lie to enemies in order to ambush them. (Contrast Aquinas II–II.Q40.a3 with Augustine Questions on the Heptateuch 6.10.)The depredations that inevitably accompany war do not necessarily entail that no war or act of armed force is justified, but they certainly constitute a good rationale for Aquinas's opening question, “Is It Always a Sin to Wage a War?” (ST II.40; emphasis added). The question reflects the wisdom of Augustine's warning that, although politics may attain “well-ordered concord” and “tranquility of order,” political achievements will always be compromised by the “miseries” and “necessities” entailed by real-world government and social living (City of God XIX.6, 13, 27). First among these is the resurgent libido dominandi (lust for domination) that perverts all sociopolitical efforts, whether to declare and wage “just war” or to establish and protect peaceful institutions. Certainly its danger is greater when violent means are deliberately adopted. War is at best a miserable necessity of political life. Aquinas is rightly reluctant to defend war as a work of love, arguing more centrally that it is required by justice and the common good.How then is love related to war as a work of justice? I find Biggar's chapter on double effect more useful than the chapter “Love in War.” The principle of double effect is a long-standing staple of Catholic moral theology, going back at least to Aquinas (ST II–II.Q64.a7). Double effect also has been operative in modern discussions of just war, for instance, in the writings of the Protestant theologian Paul Ramsey and the Catholic John C. Ford, S.J. The principle of double effect is a strategy for dealing with the ambiguities and complexities of practical reason, by putting evil intentionally caused somehow “outside” the central moral identity of the agent.In its evolved formulation, double effect holds that an act with both an evil and a good effect can be justified if the good is proportionate to the evil, the action is not already defined as immoral in itself, the evil effect is not directly intended but only foreseen and tolerated, and the evil effect is not the direct means to the good. Many questions have been raised about this principle and about whether its several conditions hang together coherently, as well as about whether modern versions are really the same as their forerunner in Aquinas.Biggar takes up an important controversy about double effect, that is, the meaning and relevance of intention in determining the morality of an act. As usually interpreted, double effect provides that a moral agent is not responsible for effects that are “beside” his or her intention. For example, if some civilians are killed as the result of an attack on a military installation, their deaths can be viewed as “collateral damage.” They would be justified morally if anticipated, but not wanted in themselves, not the main purpose of the attack, and not the means to the destruction of military capacity. On the other hand, according to the Jesuit moralist John C. Ford (1944), writing near the end of World War II, the bombing of cities has as its very purpose the terrorization of the population, to which the killing of civilians is a direct means, as well as disproportionate to any good anticipated. Similar questions are being debated in the case of drone strikes causing large numbers of civilian deaths. Yes, the purpose of drones is to destroy “high value” military targets. But is there no moral responsibility and even culpability for the certain deaths of civilians?Biggar sensitively, sensibly, and correctly refrains from using double effect to disavow moral responsibility in causing “indirect” evil effects. He rightly says that even if there is no full moral culpability, responsibility can still exist. Killing in war may not have as its main purpose the deaths of the individual soldiers, but they are most certainly part of the enterprise of war considered as a whole, the means to the desired outcome, and the immediate intended effect of actions by other individual soldiers: “wounding or killing is surely integral, not accidental, to what they are choosing to do” (103).The causation of deaths is not only foreseen, it is a necessary part of the definition of war and of its prosecution. Governments, military officers, and ordinary soldiers are all morally responsible for it, though this does not mean that it should never be done. Rather, killing the enemy is something that military personnel “choose and accept with reluctance” (106). Biggar describes the role of double effect better than the many other interpreters (e.g., in bioethics) for whom indirect intention is a way to get moral agents completely off the hook. Indeed, in many cases, not only responsibility but also culpability can be present in a decision, action, or policy that is on the whole justified and the least destructive among alternatives. Double effect is a way of recognizing that a virtuous agent properly oriented to objective goods can still be morally implicated in the causation of evil, while keeping affinity with that evil away from the core of moral identity (and from Christian love).Biggar makes good use of the caveat of James Gustafson, who, reflecting on his World War II service in Burma, observes that in the real-time occasion of decision, fine discriminations of intentionality are often beside the point. Facts, options, and intentions may be confused and confounding. A choice must be made immediately. It is undoubtedly the case that many life-and-death decisions are taken with a certain plurality of moral orientation, in view of which one might recall, “It was all I could do, but guilt and remorse remain.” The principle of double effect works best to clarify precisely how and why war is not fully compatible with a Christian intention of love. While using violent force can (very rarely) follow from loving threatened neighbors and protecting the common good, it must be kept at a distance from the center of Christian moral character.In the present century, Christian social ethics has expanded beyond the variety of twentieth-century pacifism that Biggar attributes to John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, and Richard Hays. Newer approaches occupy a middle ground between just war theory and absolute pacifism. These focus not so much on theoretical analysis as on practical strategies to end cycles of violence. They take the “hard sayings” of the Sermon on the Mount as serious directives for political action but give equal attention to grassroots and midlevel work for peace as to the decisions of heads of states and international bodies. Peacebuilding is not the same as pacifism because not all proponents rule out every armed intervention; it is not the same as just war theory because its overriding agenda is nonviolent negotiation and reconciliation.Examples are Christian adaptations of Brian Orend's category jus post bello (2006), Glen Stassen's “just peacemaking theory” (2008), and the “peacebuilding” theology and activism of the Catholic Peacebuilding Network sponsored by the University of Notre Dame and Catholic Relief Services. Statements of the Roman Catholic Church on war and peace have increasingly prioritized the biblical ideal of peace over the pragmatic necessity of war, without, however, definitively ruling out armed humanitarian intervention. In 2003, John Paul II declared war “always a defeat for humanity,” while in 2013 Pope Francis held a daylong prayer vigil encouraging negotiation rather than military measures to settle controversy over chemical weapons use by Syria.Peacemaking or peacebuilding alliances reflect the changing face of war and the changing nature of global governance. Wars between or among nation states have actually decreased since the 1980s, but civil, ethnic, and communal conflict within nations or across national borders has become the dominant form of warfare since the 1950s. While in World War I, fewer than 5 percent of deaths in war were civilian, today civilians account for 75 percent of war dead. Just war criteria applied prospectively by government officials and elite advisors are not as relevant as they once were to the realities of war.The roles and capacities of nation-states have changed in light of increasing global interdependence. Just as terrorists and crime rings operate across borders, so do agents for the common good—like decentralized networks of “subnational” entities, such as judiciaries, regulatory bodies, and legislatures; nongovernmental organizations; intergovernmental organizations; and transnational advocacy networks. It may be that one of the most effective ways to reduce the majority of violence that results from civil conflict is to create incentives and pressures at local and regional levels, supported by international law and sanctions, and to prioritize local rebuilding of the rule of law, democratic representation, and human security over armed force and killing. This is not to say, however, that the latter will never be necessary, as in the case of genocides, humanitarian emergencies, or peacekeeping.Remarking that jus post bellum considerations are implied by the criterion of right intention, Biggar rejects the proposal that they be added to jus ad bellum and jus in bello as a third category of just war thinking (3). He thus foregoes an opportunity to build provisions against the social costs of war explicitly into considerations of whether, when, and how war is to be waged. He does recognize that seeking peace is Christian ethics' most important mission. But this is not his priority, for his imagination has been differently formed. “The arts of peacemaking certainly deserve attention,” but “I have inherited a certain fate and I must honor it” (2). I am convinced that the vocation of peacebuilding in theology, ethics, and ecclesial life should always precede, anchor, and accompany Christian just war thinking. Waging war is never a direct expression of the love that imitates Christ and always to some degree defeats it.